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KLRU & the arts community invite you to join us for a night of music and art in East Austin as we premiere Arts In Context Season 7. The event is free but an RSVP is required. RSVP now

The party takes place Tuesday, Sept. 20th, starting at 6 pm at Handsome (1000 East 6th Street). Enjoy tasty bites, cocktails, live music, a gallery inspired by the Season 7 featured arts groups and a video preview of the upcoming season.

On Sept. 12-17, KLRU and PBS will be showcasing a week full of primetime programming which will focus on the challenges facing the American education system.

As part of KLRU’s and PBS’ commitment to education, the programs will explore the classrooms of today and explain how the amount of creativity and dedication that goes into teaching children makes a difference in schools and communities. Along with episodes from our core series such as POV, TED Talks and Frontline, the schedule will include primetime and PLUS programming, both of which are one-time specials.

Spotlight Education week in Austin is supported by Austin Community College.

Monday, September 12
9 pm – POV: All The Difference weaves together the stories of two promising young men as they navigate their lives in low-income, high-risk communities in Chicago. The 90-minute film explores the factors in their lives that made all the difference – an example of prioritizing education as a tool to secure a place in the middle class. Accompany two African-American teens from the South Side of Chicago on their journey to achieve their dream of graduating from college. Follow the young men through five years of hard work, sacrifice, setbacks and uncertainty.

10:30 pm – Arts In Context Music for All Offering free, intensive music education to low-income youth from Travis and Hays County, Austin Soundwaves believes firmly in the principle that all students deserve a world-class education in the fine arts. Determined to make a difference in the minority community of Austin at a young age, the Hispanic Alliance of Performing Arts launched Austin Soundwaves. Program director Patrick Slevin and his team have already seen a positive impact on their students’ overall academics, motivation levels, and self-esteem. For Slevin, Austin Soundwaves is the first step towards providing the world class fine arts education that all students deserve.

Tuesday, September 13
8 pm – FRONTLINE dives deep into the most pressing issues in education by updating two films.; “The Diploma Mill” and “Omarina’s Story.” “The Diploma Mill” (wt), a fresh look at the troubled for-profit college industry, examining reports of predatory behavior and fraud and the implosion of the education chain Corinthian Colleges. “Omarina’s Story” looks at how a program to stem the high school drop-out crisis has affected one girl’s journey. It chronicles how an innovative program to stem the high school drop-out crisis has affected one girl’s journey, from a public middle school in the Bronx to an elite New England private school to college. The film documents the divergent fates of two twins from the Bronx and sheds light on America’s dropout crisis and the brutal inequities in American Education.

9 pm – TED Talks: Education Revolution is hosted by writer/comedian Baratunde Thurston and actress/singer Sara Ramirez and includes short films, music, and inspiring speakers who are making a difference in our nation’s schools and universities. Explore innovative approaches to education. Speakers, including Anna Deavere Smith and Sal Khan, discus the school-to-prison pipeline, micromanaging kids and turning struggling students into scholars.

10 pm – The Address, a film by Ken Burns tells the story of a tiny school in Putney, Vermont, where the students are encouraged to memorize, practice and recite the Gettysburg Address, to unlock the history, context and importance of President Lincoln’s most powerful speech.

Wednesday, September 14
8 pm – NOVA: School of the Future, a two-hour documentary, looks at the school of the future by exploring “learning science,” a complex and interdisciplinary new field that encompasses neuroscience, physiology, and the psychology of children. In a new age of information, rapid innovation and globalization, how can we prepare our children to compete? Discover how the new science of learning can help us reimagine the future of education for all children.

Thursday, September 15
7:30 pm – Eastside Education is a KLRU production. Follow students, teachers and staff at an Austin high school under threat of closure by the state. For years Eastside Memorial High School has been plagued by failing test scores and negative headlines.An Eastside Education spends one semester at one of Austin’s lowest income schools, as teachers, parents, administrators, and students fight to meet state accountability standards or watch their school be closed.

8 pm – Time for School is an award-winning documentary project that visited seven classrooms in seven countries around the world. View an update to the documentary project that visits seven classrooms in seven countries and offers a glimpse of seven children struggling to get a basic education. The film catches up with the now adult seven to see how their lives have turned out.

Friday, September 169:30 pm – Craft in America: Teachers begins its eighth season on PBS with a unique hour that celebrates teachers: craft artists renowned for their own artistic visions, and committed to passing on their skills and passion for craft to new generations of students and artists.

Three Austin, Latino artists: Claudia Aparicio-Gamundi, James Huizar and Claudia Zapata are changing the tradition of art through experience and happenings, not just art.

In 2012, The Puro Chingón Collective was born, which set off to break the traditional art space and aimed it towards the exterior of the art space, resulting in connectivity among the art and bystanders. The collective is a Latino art trifecta specializing in happenings, the activation of nontraditional spaces, designer toys and art zines. Ultimately, the art work goes untouched from the artist to the public and illustrates that people are not alone in their thoughts.

Austin is constantly changing. Whether that be its music, food or art scene there is always something trendy around the corner. Which is why Arts In Context is seeking applicants for artists to feature on the award-winning series.

With Arts In Context, KLRU aims to pique curiosity and inspire individuals by spotlighting visual arts, dance, music and culture. Each episode is compelling and character driven.

If you have a story that anyone can be inspired by or can relate to, make sure to apply today. Apply here

Prakash Mohandas, founder of Agni The Dance Company, has set his mark in Austin by opening the first Bollywood dance studio in the area. Founded in 2007, Agni consists of professional performers, aspiring artists, instructors, production assistants and a management team united by a common love of the performing arts and creative expression.

“Choreography doesn’t come from thin air,” Mohandas said. “For me, (the song) has to inspire me for me to want to choreograph it. When I get into that space, it’s a very spiritual experience.”

One of Agni’s primary goals is to provide quality Indian, performing arts education in various locations in Austin and Round Rock areas through classes conducted by experienced and renowned instructors.

“Austin is fantastic for eclectic audiences,” he said. “I think it’s one of the cities that I’ve seen that is so welcoming to new kinds of art forms and a new kinds of dance.”

While traveling across Europe, Mychal Mitchell thought she would be inspired by the architecture of the cities she visited but after having her journal stolen in a train station she soon discovered a bookbinding studio in Venice and fell in love with the old-world-style of handmade leather journals.

“I discovered bookbinding kind of my accident,” Mitchell said. “About a week later, I was kind of flirting with this very handsome street artist and he ended up taking me to his friend’s little bookbinding studio and I ended up being blown away by what he was doing.”
Now, more than 20 years later, Mitchell continues to use the techniques she learned on her European trip and shares her beautiful handcrafted journals and photo albums with others in her East Austin Studio.

“It’s really inspiring to see the way that people use them,” she said. “Especially when people bring them back to me and they are all filled up…they’re gorgeous.”

Dance Another World has created a new standard on the classic view of learning a new language. Through dance, Dance Another World, intertwines an English immersion program for young non-native females in America. Founded by trained ballerina, Dawn Mann, Dance Another World helps refugees and students from low socioeconomic communities by inspiring its students to express their thoughts and feelings into a creative movement.

For over eleven years, Cinematic Symphony has shared its love for the music of film, television and video games with the Austin community. With two concerts per year, this ensemble comprised of local musicians is dedicated to promoting musical education in the form of entertainment. Visual displays and popular music of our time provide an enriching opportunity and introduction to classical music.

More than an after-school program, the Austin Community Steelband has created an expressive place to uplift local youth through learning steelpan music. Originating in Trinidad, steelbands served as a way for poor and oppressed people to come together and express themselves through music. Executive Director Paula Beaird and Musical Director Cecil Francis continue manifest the soul of Trinidad by providing a free musical instruction where underprivileged children learn skills like memorization, focus and listening that they can take home and apply to their lives at home and in school. With an emphasis on collaborative and enriching learning, the students have turned it into more than an after-school program. They are now a part of a vibrant, historically-rich musical community that extends beyond the city limits of Austin, Texas.

Here at KLRU, we love our planet and proudly celebrate Earth Day. With it coming up on April 22nd, what better way to pay tribute to our big blue planet than to air programs that embrace nature and shed light on problems the Earth currently faces?

On April 21,Arts In Context Thirst explores an art installation that takes on the pressing issue of water shortages and challenges the community to action at 7:30 p.m. Presented by the Center For Women & Their Work, Thirst memorializes the loss of over 300 million trees that died in the Texas in the drought of 2011.

On April 28, National Parks: America’s Best Idea Going Home (1920-1933) tells the story of a Nebraska housewife who searches for peace and inspiration in park after park, while a honeymoon couple seeks fame and adventure in the Grand Canyon; and the future of the Great Smoky Mountains becomes caught in a race with the lumbermen’s saws.

National Parks: America’s Best Idea Great Nature (1933-1945) explains that in the midst of an economic catastrophe and then a world war, the national parks provide a source of much-needed jobs and then much-needed peace on April 29; the park idea changes to include new places and new ways of thinking; and in Wyoming, battle lines are drawn along the front of the Teton Range.

A stubborn iconoclast fights a lonely battle on behalf of a species nearly everyone hates on National Parks: America’s Best Idea The Morning Of Creation (1946-1980) on April 30. America’s “Last Frontier” becomes a testing ground for the future of the park idea; and in unprecedented numbers, American families create unforgettable memories, passing on a love of the parks to the next generation.

KLRU Q also crafted some of their April programming in honor of our planet.

On April 15, Q starts the night off with Big Burn: American Experienceat 8 p.m. This one-hour special highlights the hundreds of wildfires that raged across the Northern Rockies during the summer of 1910. Then at 9 p.m., America’s First Forest: Carl Schenck And The Ashtev examines the pivotal role played by pioneering forestry educator Carl Schenck and his founding of America’s first school of forestry-the Biltmore Forest School. To finish the night off, Jens Jensen The Living Green profiles the unsung pioneering landscape architect who became one of America’s most influential urban designers and early conservationists at 10 p.m.

Then on Earth Day itself, April 22, experience the battle for a living planet in the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement, spanning 50 years of grassroots and global activism on American Masters A Fierce Green Fire at 8 p.m. After that, Green Fire: Aldo Leopold And A Land Ethic For Our Time highlights Aldo Leopold’s extraordinary career as an environmentalist, tracing how he shaped and influenced the modern environmental movement. Finally, Symphony of the Soil artistically explores the miraculous substance soil at 10 p.m.